Our pastor and I do what we lovingly call "chapel" time for the preschoolers in our church. We meet each Tuesday and Wednesday morning (surprisingly) in the Chapel for about 10 minutes of singing and then our pastor does a great object lesson.
The other day at chapel, I had just finished leading the song part of Chapel and sat down on the front pew. As our pastor was beginning his devotion a little guy sitting behind (whose name I can never remember) leaned up and pulled on my sleeve. "Hey," he says, "I love you!" I felt my heart "strangely warmed!" I leaned back to him and said "Hey! I love you too!"
Right at that moment I thought about that story in Scripture where some of the people were bringing kids to Jesus to be blessed and His disciples said "get those kids out of here! Jesus is a really important guy and He doesn't have time for this kind of stuff!" But do you remember what Jesus said? He said "leave these kids alone! The Kingdom of God is made up of people like this!" And he proceeded to lay hands those children and blessing them before He moved on to the next ministry op.
Jesus loves kids. And so do I. I was also reminded that day that we parents have a HUGE responsibility to lead our kids to Jesus. In addition, the CHURCH has a responsibility too to help the parents help their kids learn and live the Faith. There is also the reality that there a many children out there who do not experience love, provision or moral guidance because their parents don't know how to parent. Worse yet, there are kids who are verbally, emotionally and even physically abused by parent figures or relatives. And because the divorce rate is so shamefully high in this country, we have been forced to redefine "family" and as a result we have kids with two or three sets of parents, two or three mothers or fathers and some who never know their parents. It's sad ya know. I long for the days when family was defined by a Mom and Dad who genuinely love each other and they and their kids were God-fearing people.
And yet, in that one little moment during Chapel time that day I caught a glimpse of something very real, very healthy and very sweet. And while the little boy whose name I can never remember might not realize it, I caught a glimpse of the simple love of God between us-real, unconditional love! What a blessing!
